Abe
Fortas was born in Memphis, Tennessee on June 19, 1910. His parents,
Woolfe (who later changed his first name to William) and Rachel
Berzansky, were born in Russia and Lithuania, respectively. The Fortases
were part of the massive immigration to the United States of Jews and
Catholics from Eastern and Southern Europe during the first decade of
the twentieth century. Abe Fortas's parents settled in Memphis because
Woolfe's brother was already living there. Fortas was raised as an
Orthodox Jew in Memphis, although as a adult he was not a religious
person. Fortas studied hard, and obtained a scholarship to attend
Southwestern College in Memphis, where he excelled both academically and
socially. In 1930, at the age of 20, Fortas entered Yale Law School as a
scholarship student. Fortas finished second in his class, and was the
editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. In 1933, although appointed to
the Yale Law School faculty as a teaching fellow, he moved to Washington
and the Agriculture Department, working with the legal realist Jerome
Frank. Although Fortas alternated between Yale and Washington for most
of the rest of the 1930s, he left Yale permanently for a position in the
Department of the Interior, where he eventually was named under
secretary. In January 1946, Fortas entered the private practice of law
with Thurman Arnold, a former Yale Law School professor, legal realist
par excellence and New Dealer. They were joined shortly thereafter by
Paul Porter, and the firm of Arnold, Fortas and Porter was created. It
is known today as Arnold & Porter, one of Washington, D.C.'s largest and
most well respected law firms.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) ran for Senator from Texas in 1948. His
opponent in the Democratic primary (then a one party state, contested
elections occurred in primaries, not the general election), Coke
Stevenson, had been a popular governor of Texas. LBJ had appeared to win
the primary by 87 votes. Charges of voting fraud in south Texas led
Stevenson to obtain an injunction preventing LBJ's name from appearing
on the ballot for the general election, pending a hearing. Although a
number of lawyers were involved in determining LBJ's strategy, it was
Fortas who managed the litigation and succeeded in having the injunction
overturned. Thereafter, LBJ viewed Fortas as the best lawyer in America,
and the relationship between LBJ and Fortas, which began in 1937, became
stronger during the 1950s and 1960s. That relationship would eventually
lead to Fortas's nomination to the Supreme Court in 1965.
Arthur Goldberg, who had been named to the Court by President John
F. Kennedy in 1962, found the Court not to his liking. He resigned from
the Court to become Ambassador to the United Nations. Fortas initially
declined the nomination, apparently because he was concerned about his
personal financial situation. But LBJ told Fortas he was going to
nominate him, and, rather reluctantly, Fortas accepted the appointment.

Fortas's appointment in 1965 ensured
the continuation of the Court's liberal majority. Between 1965 and 1969,
the Court decided a number of cases expanding the protections of
individual rights in criminal procedure, privacy and juvenile rights
cases. Fortas's general view of judging was to find legal authority to
support the conclusion to which he was predisposed. This "realist"
approach to jurisprudence was one of the reasons why Fortas and Justice
Hugo
Black found themselves at odds with one another.

During his time on the Court, Fortas
continued to advise LBJ on political matters, both foreign and domestic.
In foreign affairs, the Vietnam War was becoming a more contentious and
divisive issue. In domestic affairs, the treatment of black Americans,
including the protection of civil rights of black Americans, was a
defining topic of the 1960s.

In June 1968, at the end of the 1967
Term of the Supreme Court, Chief Justice
Earl
Warren had Fortas arrange an appointment at the White House, at
which time Warren announced his retirement, effective upon the
confirmation of his successor. On June 26, LBJ nominated Fortas as Chief
Justice. To Fortasís seat, LBJ nominated a friend from Texas, Homer
Thornberry. In July, Fortas erred, appearing before the Senate Judiciary
Committee despite the fact that no sitting Justice had ever done so.
During those hearings, Fortas lied to the Committee, although he had not
yet been caught in that lie. The Senate recessed without voting on the
nomination. When Senator Robert Griffin learned in September that Fortas
had accepted $15,000 to give some summer school lectures at American
Universityís law school, money that had been raised by Fortasís former
partners and clients, the nomination was in trouble. In early October,
after a vote to end the filibuster on the nomination failed, Fortas
asked that his nomination be withdrawn. By 1969, further revelations led
Fortas to resign from the Court. A convicted financier named Louis
Wolfson had agreed to pay Fortas $20,000 per year for the remainder of
his life, an amount that continued until the death of his wife if Fortas
died before she did. Fortas received the first check in January 1966,
after joining the Court, and though he returned it in December, Fortas's
actions were condemned as ethically improper.

After resigning from the Court in May
1969, Fortas was rebuffed in his attempt to rejoin the law firm he had
helped create, although his wife remained a partner in the firm. In
1970, he started another law firm. He practiced law until his death in
1982.

Fortas was both extraordinarily
intelligent and politically savvy. He was a great lawyer, and a complex
man of many masks.

In 1935, Fortas married Carol Agger.
According to Professor Laura Kalman, a biographer of Fortas, Agger told
Fortas at the time of their marriage that she did not want to have
children. Fortas died on April 5, 1982.